Reading the contents of a file

In this recipe, we are going to retrieve the contents of a file as text and print it to the console. We are going to use the standard library File.readText() extension function, returning a String representing the text content of the given File instance. 

 

Getting ready

Make sure you have a sample non-empty file included in your project to read its contents. You can clone the sample project provided with the book's GitHub repository: https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Kotlin-Standard-Library-Cookbook. In this recipe, we are going to use the file1.txt file located in the src/main/resources directory in the sample project. 

How to do it...

1. Import the File.separator constant and assign an alias to it:

import java.io.File.separator as SEPARATOR

2. Declare a String storing a path to the file we are going to read:

val filePahtName = "src${SEPARATOR}main${SEPARATOR}resources${SEPARATOR}file1.txt"

3. Instantiate a File using the specified path:

val filePahtName = "src${SEPARATOR...